Sharp Top Mountain is one of the most popular hikes in the region. Every year thousands of hikers climb the path to the summit to enjoy the 360-degree views. But few know of the place along the main trail where an unmarked path winds down the mountain to the spot where five young men died on a snowy night 70 years ago this February.
The steep-sided mountain rises like a terrestrial iceberg from the sea of gently rolling farmland at the southern tip of the Shenandoah Valley. And on the evening of February 2, 1943, the mountain may have looked like an oceanic iceberg, with its flanks covered in a thin coat of fresh snow that had fallen that day.
That was the night flight 29281 failed to correctly navigate its assigned training route, and smashed into the mountain, killing all five crew members. Today, curious and determined hikers such as Gary Davis, who took the photos for this piece, can make their way along the rocky slopes to see what remains of the wreckage.
Visitors will discover large sections of the B-25 Mitchell’s wings and fuselage, along with hundreds of smaller shards of twisted aircraft aluminum and steel. The massive Curtiss-Wright-Twin Cyclone 14-cylinder, 1,600-horsepower engines are still up there; too heavy for even the strongest souvenir hunters to drag away.
The larger pieces of aluminum are tattooed with initials and dates etched by hikers who have defaced the wreckage over the past 70 years. There is also a bronze memorial plaque affixed to a large bolder, inscribed with the names of the men who died in service to their country that night.
Aviation archeologists consider this crash site to be one of the best-documented such sites in America. And while a WWII crash site near one of Virginia’s most popular day hikes may seem unusual, stateside training crashes like this one were all too common.
During the second world war more than 22,000 planes crashed, and more than 15,000 crewmen gave their lives training for combat while here in the United States. Those deaths represent nearly a quarter of all the Army Air Force casualties suffered during the war – a costly reminder of the frenzied wartime effort to deliver both men and machines to the front.
But the facts and statistics don’t tell the whole story.
It’s curious that even though the site is 3,000-plus feet above sea level, it’s easy for a visitor to imagine the wreckage as that of a sunken ship, rather than a crashed plane. The forest floor seems transformed into a tilted seabed from which the waters have been drained so one can walk about the debris field that sunk to the bottom of the sky.
Yet the broken remains of a fallen plane are not like the hulk of a submerged ship. There are no barnacles, rusticles or fishes finning about the wreck. The aircraft aluminum is so impervious to the elements that even the ailerons look as if with a little coaxing, they would still swivel.
The wreckage is a tattered mechanical sampler of American industrial handiwork – the sheets of aluminum stitched together in perfectly straight rows of rivets put in place by men and women with steady hands and sharp eyes. The neatly braided stainless steel safety wires that lock the engine bolts in place still sparkle in the sunlight.
Too, there are the skeletons of ancient chestnuts at the crash site. By 1943, the blight that wiped out these giants of the Appalachians had already killed nearly all of their kind. Some of the tree remains are charred, blackened by fire, possibly the fire that engulfed the plane that night.
The trunk of one of the trees is still standing: a weathered sentry silently watching over the shards of aluminum and steel, that were torn apart along with those young men that night.
